When the social networking site Twitter started up, the founders clearly stated that they would not place advertisements on the service. To combat this, earlier this year they set up a Twitter deal alert service. With this, the company gained partners that users could acquire deals from. Now, Twitter is essentially expanding on the idea of a promoted account by selling accounts with a higher status.

Promoted Accounts, as shown on Twitter's blog, are being launched as a part of the "Suggestions for You" section of their site. "Suggestions for You" attempts to match you up with other Twitter users based on who you follow and content you mention. Promoted Accounts are added into this, using an algorithm that will attempt to match a user up with one of these accounts.

The example that Twitter used involved the promoted account, @xbox. They described the process such as this:

For example, a lot of people who follow several gaming-related accounts also follow @xbox. If someone follows gaming-related accounts, but not @xbox, Twitter may recommend @xbox to that person.

Companies will be able to purchase these accounts which will push their content to more people than if it were a regular account. This same concept happens with promoted trends. Using a promoted account, a company or service will be able to have access to a wider audience and become more visible in the vast sea of tweets where a normal account may get lost.

Promoted Tweets, Accounts, and Trends all are now available to select companies as of now, but in the future more people will be able to access these unique features.